The Fight for Barbara

The fight for Barbara Much of it is word-for-word true," Lawrence wrote to Edward Garnett; and that is both the play's strength and weakness. Jimmy Wesson, the collier's son, and his aristocratic married lover, Barbara Tressider, are clearly based on Lawrence himself and Frieda Weekley.Their rows and recriminations, as well as Barbara's guilt over her desertion of her distraught husband, closely mirror reality; and when the husband himself turns up, along with Barbara's parents, the stage is set for an epic domestic battle.